The situation in Syria seems to be
rapidly spiralling out of control. Recent developments point to a sharp
escalation in the crisis, even as prospects of a grim and drawn-out
civil war appear imminent. Ferocious street battles are being waged in
Aleppo by soldiers in armoured vehicles and tanks, supported by
artillery and air fire, as President Assad’s forces seek to drastically
expand the sphere of conflict and strike a decisive blow against the
opposition. Proponents of peace have all but given up on achieving any
diplomatic headway, and Kofi Annan, whose peace plan was the centrepiece
of all diplomatic efforts in Syria, has expressed a desire to opt out
of the peace process.

Kofi Annan’s scepticism is not misplaced. As the violence escalates,
prospects of a truce between the military and rebel forces in Aleppo and
Damascus appear bleak. The focus of the military’s efforts is to take
back from the rebels the occupied south-western part of Aleppo, Syria's
commercial capital. The rebel forces have held-up admirably so far but,
in the absence of external military support, are coming under increasing
pressure from the security forces. What is more, there is now a serious
threat of a looming human catastrophe. Reportedly, over 200,000 people
have fled Aleppo, creating a potential refugee crisis. Turkey is
reported to have beefed up its military presence on its border with
Syria, and is providing the Syrian rebels all material and moral
support, upping the ante in Ankara’s own stand-off with Damascus.
The End Game

However one looks at it, the situation is increasingly looking like the
end game for the Assad regime. The protests in rebel strongholds had
been simmering for some time, but it all seems to have come to a head a
fortnight ago when a powerful bomb ripped through the National Security
Headquarters in Damascus killing three top-ranking ministers of the
regime. So shaken was President Assad after the attack that his
government issued a warning that it would consider using its stockpiles
of chemical and biological weapons to suppress the rebellion, if there
was strong reason to suspect the involvement of an “external hand” in
engineering the attacks by rebel forces. In response, the United Nations
Security Council cautioned Assad against taking such a drastic measure
and ordered him to secure his stockpile of Weapons of mass Destruction
(WMD).

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council and its Western and Middle
Eastern allies issued calls for external intervention that would bypass
the UN Security Council altogether in bringing about a regime change in
Damascus. For President Assad, the shock of losing his top aides to a
bomb blast in the heart of the most secure zone in the national capital
has brought home, perhaps for the first time, the magnitude of the
crisis he faces. Only a few weeks ago, he seemed well in control of the
situation, but now finds himself reduced to a spectator in a rapidly
moving game where the opposition clearly has the upper hand. The
regime’s stronghold of Aleppo is floundering, with the army struggling
to wrest control from the rebels, and the enemy is at the gates of
Damascus.

The Threat of WMD

Assad knows that, from a tactical perspective, he must now appear
strong. Now is the time to expose his trump cards, if he has to retain
any chances of staying in power. The threat of WMD is one such ‘ace’
that considerably boosts his leverage. In late-June, when Syria shot
down a Turkish reconnaissance aircraft, Damascus had sought to send a
clear message to the West that a Libya-style air campaign was not going
to work in Syria, as the country’s air defences were too strong for any
misadventure to achieve even a minimal degree of success. The WMD threat
is again meant to signal that Syria will be a harder nut to crack than
Libya. And while in the days that have followed, Syrian officials have
tried to retract the comments made about using such weapons, the issue
is now out in the open.

There may be reason to suspect that the issue of Syria’s WMD programme
is being exaggerated. But if the Syrian regime does, indeed, have the
capacity to produce and deliver chemical and biological weapons, then it
has severe implications not only for Syria, but the larger West Asian
region and including for Israel and Turkey.

‘Red-herring’ or not, the WMD issue could be a potential ‘game-changer’,
although its effectiveness would depend on the sort of response it
evokes from the international community. Conceivably, there will be some
who will choose to get more closely involved in the crisis. For states
like Israel, the imperative of pre-emptive strikes on Syria will
override all other considerations. But others like Turkey will be more
circumspect. Given their physical proximity to Syria and the threat of
an all out war following a muscular intervention, there will be a
certain reluctance to the use of force. There is a third category of
players that will draw the opposite conclusion out of Syria’s stated
intention of putting chemical weapons to use. For them, intervening in
Syria will imply becoming a legitimate target of the regime and bring
about assured retaliation. This would, in a sense, vindicate the stand
taken by regimes such as those in North Korea, who have for long argued
that WMD do act as an effective constraint on the willingness of states
to exercise power.

The Real Deal

There are three fundamental questions that need to be answered if one is
to get to the bottom of the murky developments in Syria: a) What led to
the escalation of violence in Syria? b) Who constructs the narratives
of conflict in the war zone? And, c) Who benefits from the violence? In
the wake of a recent expose in The Guardian (Charlie Skelton, The Syrian
Opposition: Who's doing the talking), it is now quite clear that events
in Syria are not as indigenous as made out by the mainstream Western
media. The rebel movement is a phenomenon that was nurtured and provided
momentum by organized external forces, including many Western
governments that, for many years, led a focused campaign to topple the
Syrian regime. And this is, apparently, all being done to undermine
Iran, Syria’s steadfast regional ally and an avowed adversary of the
West. The conflict underway is not, quite, for the benefit of the people
of Syria, even though it is all meant to seem that way.

In stark contrast to the narrative being propagated by the Western
media, there has been some willingness on the part of the regime to
settle for a peaceful solution. But a non-violent resolution based on
consensus, and one which does not result in Assad’s departure, is not
the result that the West is seeking. To achieve what’s being sought, it
is important to make the world believe that the regime is resorting to
brutality and butchery, and that without external intervention, there
would be a massacre in rebel strongholds.

The truth, of course, is that “armed groups” are as engaged in the
violent killings in Syria as the ruling dispensation (as acknowledged by
Kofi Annan himself). But now that the regime appears fragile, the
opposition is keen to press home the advantage and go for the kill. So,
regardless of the fact that the onus of ‘restraint’ lies with the
military—if only by virtue of it being the more organised force with far
greater lethal weaponry—the situation on the ground will not change
unless the rebel forces show an equal willingness to scale back
violence.

Ironically, both President Assad and the rebels acknowledge that radical
Islamic elements are benefiting from the rapidly deteriorating security
situation. Yet, all sides–including Syria’s allies Russia and China–are
now so heavily invested in the conflict that a ‘negotiated settlement’
is just not an option.

On August 4, at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, India
abstained from voting after failing to rid the original draft of an
explicit reference to the July 22 League of Arab States resolution that
called upon Al-Assad to step down. There has been a concerted push by
the Arab League to by-pass the Security Council completely,
‘grid-locked’ as it is, over the fate of the incumbent regime in Syria.
It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that the final moves in this
vicious geopolitical battle will not be played in the UN at all. The
WMD insinuation by the West, the debate over the impending genocide in
Aleppo, and the swelling ranks of refugees, all point to an orchestrated
shift in the narrative of the conflict that makes external intervention
an ‘inevitability’.

The problem is that while the opposition forces in Syria are gaining in
strength, their ranks are divided among numerous groups, with no clear
political leadership. Even if President Assad were to step down, the
Alawite military machine and its sectarian allies would most likely
fight on, holding large parts of territory, leading to a low-level,
protracted civil war.

The end-game has begun, but the end is nowhere in sight.

(Abhijit Singh is a Research Fellow with the National Maritime
Foundation. This commentary first appeared in the Institute of Defence
Studies and Analysis (IDSA) website on August 7, 2012)